The question took me aback, as it would any American psychiatrist wary of self-disclosure. But this was Iraq, where religion is central to people’s lives and identities. So after a slight pause, I responded with a halfhearted affirmative to the mullah I had come to see.Mullah Eskandar was a faith healer — a youngish, tanned, bearded man in a flowing white dishdasha and a matching skullcap. Seated on a rug in his reception area with an oversize poster of the sacred Kaaba in Mecca, he emanated authority and sageness despite his relative youth.

We weren't going to tell Donna Karan that I had a headache. "She's very nurturing," fretted one of her colleagues, "and if she finds out, well, that's all she'll want to focus on." Meanwhile, several sleek and attractive staff members here in New York at Karan's Urban Zen Foundation, the West Village headquarters for her charity — as well as a hangout for holistic-living-loving friends such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Christy Turlington Burns, and Madonna — are gracefully buzzing around, seeking out essential oils to rub into my temples and pressure points.

JERUSALEM — Israeli archaeologists said Monday they may have found the earliest evidence yet for the existence of modern man, and if so, it could upset theories of the origin of humans.

A Tel Aviv University team excavating a cave in central Israel said teeth found in the cave are about 400,000 years old and resemble those of other remains of modern man, known scientifically as Homo sapiens, found in Israel. The earliest Homo sapiens remains found until now are half as old.

Not so rosy prospects await the Russians next year – this was revealed yesterday at the Central House of Journalists, where parapsychologists, shamans, psychics and astrologers told Russian reporters what to expect and what to fear in 2011. The main prediction for next year is that it will be the end of the Putin era and will be marked by riots, protest movements, another summer drought and already habitual rising prices.